Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

The thing you have to remember should you choose to see The Age of Adaline, is that the film is much more about the ‘what’ more than it is about the ‘why’ or ‘how.’ If you expect to find out exactly why Adaline doesn’t age, you do find that out. In fact, the film dolls out a long winded explanation via some sort of pseudo-sciency Neil deGrasse Tyson-esque explanation. But the film itself is more interested in asking, what would you do with your life if you could live forever?

The Age of Adaline stars Blake Lively as the ever-youthful Adaline, who finds herself in a unique position of everlasting youth after a freak car accident and a little help from planetary alignment. Born in the early 1900s, Adaline finds herself stuck at age 29 for roughly 80 years. During this time, she leads a solitary life; moving around and changing her identity every ten years so her secret isn’t discovered. However, in present day San Francisco she meets Ellis (Michiel Huisman), a charming philanthropist who gives her a reason to open up and love again.

As the film plainly illustrates, Adaline not being able to age is more of a curse than a blessing. Having lived alone for so long, Adaline doesn’t let people get close. Though she is well off financially, she lives modestly so as not to attract any attention. And probably the biggest heart breaker . . . she keeps a photo album of all the pets she’s lost over the years. This all points to the fact that you can’t really live your life when you confine yourself like this.

Adaline with her regular aging daughter.

Of course, this story wouldn’t be interesting unless a curveball was thrown her way. Adaline’s daughter, who she had before her accident and who has aged normally, pushes her to not worry about her in her old age, but more importantly; to find love and live her life. And what do you know, on the day before her birthday (New Year’s Eve), she meets Ellis. From the moment he lays eyes on her he is transfixed and for a few fleeting moments she seems to be a little intrigued. This leads to Adaline questioning the life she’s lived up until this point. Should she stick to the plan that she’s set out for herself–solitary, alone, but safe? Or should she open herself up to love, even though she will most likely outlive the person that she’s with? While these are all great questions, the film pretty much takes all the expected turns.

Adaline and Ellis’s first encounter on New Year’s Eve.

Blake gives a nice performance in the film and plays an ‘older person trapped in a younger person’s body’ fairly well. I always got a sense that she was holding something back, not really opening up fully anytime Ellis made advances on her. And of course she looks great in any time period and got to show off a bunch of great looks as there were multiple flashbacks of her through the years. Michiel’s Ellis, meh, I could take him or leave him. He wasn’t bad in the role, he was more okay than anything and I think someone else could have played that role just as easily. His character did come off a little stalker-ish at times when he kept showing up at places Adaline was at. He’s actually more carismatic in his role as Daario Naharis of the Second Sons in Game of Thrones.

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about that narration. Within the first few minutes of the film, the narrator comes in and literally tells us about Adaline and her life. It then moves on to tell us specifically how, in scientific terms, why Adaline no longer ages. I’m not a purist by any means, so I’m open to narration providing me straightforward details when it’s applied appropriately. But, in this case, the narration was so out of place and so unnecessary that it almost made me feel dumber for listening to it. Had the narration not taken place, myself and I’m sure much of the audience could have inferred what happened to Adaline. The narration, however, was not limited to just the beginning of the film. The same style of narration is employed several more times throughout the film and actually closes the film out with more unnecessary mumbo-jumbo.

Adaline celebrating New Year’s in the 1940s

On the whole The Age of Adaline doesn’t do much in terms of providing drama or romance. Yes, romance is displayed for us on-screen but I never really fully bought into Adaline and Ellis relationship. Still, it’s an interesting film in the sense that it tries to be a little bit more than a romance movie. If you’ve ever had a burning question about whether or not to find someone to love if you were forever young, then you’ll definitely want to check out The Age of Adaline. Or if you’re just looking for a decent date movie before heading out to Avengers next weekend, then Adaline fits the bill just nicely too.

Every Earth Day Disney puts out a family-friendly animal documentary. In the past, they’ve told us stories about our planet’s oceans, chimpanzees, African cats, and brown bears. This year’s film, Monkey Kingdom focuses on a troop of toque macaque monkeys in Sri Lanka.

The first thing that usually comes to mind when someone thinks ‘wildlife documentary’ is usually those old boring wildlife videos from high school with bland narration about whatever the animals on screen are doing. If you haven’t seen any of the Disneynature series of films then you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise as their films are crafted really well and present the audience with conventions that you’ll get in a regular film. Things such as a protagonist that the movie follows, a plot that tells the story of our protagonist, fun supporting characters, rising tension, and because it’s a Disney movie . . . a happy ending.

Monkey Kingdom focuses on Maya, a pretty well-groomed macaque monkey who’s at the bottom of her troop’s social strata. Like the human world, the toque macaque monkeys of Sri Lanka have a social class structure–the privileged get all the best fruit on the top of fig tree, while those on the bottom (literally the ground) have to scrounge around for food. The film follows Maya as she struggles to find food, raise her young son, and her climb up the troop’s social structure–which helps them to survive.

It’s actually a pretty ingenious endeavor when you think about it. How do you get people to watch what might ordinarily be a boring subject? By getting them into it. Give the audience someone to root for. Someone that they can empathize with. For us, that person (or monkey rather) is Maya. I don’t know how much of Tina Fey’s narration is actually true, but from the footage the producers shot and edited together; they’ve crafted a pretty interesting story that people will sit down to watch.

When the film starts off, Maya is essentially a low income worker with no good prospects and she only stays with her troop because she knows that if she were to leave, she would not be protected by any number of predators that lurk in the surrounding jungle. We see Maya “going to work” every day as she goes out to search for food. We see her as a single mother when she begins to raise her son on her own. And we see her rise to prominence in her tribe when they start to rely on her skills as a searcher and gatherer of food.

There are a number of fun moments in the film–one or two of which I wouldn’t be surprised if they were staged. In one particular scene, Maya and some of the other low-class monkeys raid a human kitchen where a birthday cake with a bunch of different goodies are all perfectly laid out, ripe for the plundering. It’s fun to watch the monkeys go crazy grabbing at all this food, but I found it really hard to believe that the filmmakers just happened upon a scene like that.

Conversely, there’s an emotional sequence in the film when Maya is separated from her son by “The Sisters”, a trio of upper-class female monkeys who treat lower classed monkeys badly because they can. While more heart-wrenching moments like these are few and far between, it does give us a sense that that the animal kingdom mirrors the human kingdom in many similar ways.

If I were to tell you the plot of this story without telling you that it stared monkeys, you might think it’s a halfway decent movie. And for the most part it is. Believe it or not the narration adds a lot to the film. It’s not so much Tina Fey’s personality as it is how the filmmakers edited the footage they shot and developed the narrative for it. Again, who can say exactly how much of what we hear is actually how things happened. At the end of the day, just like in any movie, you’re here to be entertained and that’s exactly what Monkey Kingdom does. It gets you to root for Maya and her family of monkeys.

—

As in previous years, a portion of opening week box office sales will be donated to an organization that will help the animals and/or environment that the film was shot in. In conjunction with Conservation International, this year’s collected proceeds will go towards protecting habitat across Indonesia, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. Not only do you get to see a movie the entire family can enjoy, but part of the cost you pay for admission will help Maya and other monkeys in the region. Remember, it’s only during the first week of Monkey Kingdom’s engagement (April 17-23).

There’s nothing all that wrong with Insurgent. It’s actually a somewhat competent sequel in the Divergent series that doesn’t suffer middle chapter syndrome: there’s some action and the storyline moves. It’s just that… What were we talking about again?

Oh. And there you go.

Somehow, Insurgent is just not memorable. We’ve seen all of this before in Twilight, The Hunger Games, Mortal Instruments, Beautiful Creatures, The Maze Runner, The Running Man, and of course, Battle Royale. And by now, unless the young adult book adaptation movies do something drastic with their female heroines and post-apocalypse imaginings (or lack thereof), the genre is just about as burnt-out as the landscape in Mad Max.

In fact, I can barely bring myself to re-cap the last film, much less do a synopsis for this one. Frankly, I completely forgot Divergent and actually had to rent the film to watch again the night before the screening of its sequel. And once the lights went down and the screen lit up, I still did not have total recall. And no, I wasn’t drunk.

Here’s my best try: In the future, to keep the peace, a walled city kinda like the one in Attack on Titan or Mega City One in Dredd is broken into five factions of society. Or was it seven? I’m too lazy to look it up so we’ll just go with five, yes, five factions. Our heroine Tris, used to belong to the self-less, government-ruling Abnegation but when she hit puberty, she decided to join Dauntless, a group in charge of policing the city and they like to hoot and holler, get tattoos and run around a lot.

Oh, and Tris took a test that revealed she is a Divergent—she can fit into more than one faction. So by the first movie’s end, Tris’s parents died, and she, her brother Caleb, her new boyfriend Four, Four’s abusive father, and a kidnapped member of Dauntless played by Miles Teller are on the run. The new film opens with them taking shelter in Amity, a faction devoted to peace and love. Actually, I’m not sure what the difference is between Amity and Abnegation except Amity seems more hare krishna-like because they offer good tidings when they give you your plate at the buffet line.

You know, this is actually really (too) complicated. I forgot to mention Kate Winslet, leader of the smart people, Erudite, who wants to rule the city like Donald Sutherland in The Hunger Games. She needs Tris to unlock this box that looks like the Tesseract from The Avengers. Once unlocked, the box will reveal some sort of big thing. This all takes place in this room with tentacles that stab into Tris like the ones from The Matrix and Tris enters this simulation like the one in The Matrix and she does all these tasks and things explode slowly in a nice computer-y way like The Matrix and…

What were we talking about again?

I just don’t wanna type anymore. I’m tired. The actors, Buddha bless them, don’t seem to mind relentless cinematic thievery though. Teller plays the ruthless, kidnapped Dauntless baddie Peter with the proper sense of bullying and self-loathing. Ansel Elgort plays Tris’s conflicted brother Caleb. And Shailene Woodley plays Tris with a determined ambition to not be pegged as a Jennifer Lawrence wanna-be. (Interestingly enough, Woodley slept with Teller in The Spectacular Now. She also slept with Elgort in The Fault in Our Stars. At this rate, by the end of the decade, at least on screen, Woodley could possibly sleep with the rest of the series’ male cast.)

Oh and everybody in the theater squealed when Daniel Dae Kim popped up as the leader of Erudite. He conducted himself with great dignity. (Does anybody still watch Hawaii Five-0? Oh wait yeah…my mom.)

I think we’ve come to the point where we must simply acknowledge that these films were made from books that were made for young adults. Particularly young adults who haven’t seen many other movies. I think I’ll stop here. I’m tired of writing about it and to paraphrase the wise words imparted by Taylor Swift, I should just shake it off.

One more thing. They’re also planning to split the final book in the series, Allegiant, into two movies. Like Harry Potter. And The Hunger Games.

High school is rough. With age comes insight and perspective, so you can look back on your high school days and ask “Wow, were we . . . were things, really that dramatic when I was in high school?” Through the lens of The DUFF, it’s safe to say that though the lingo, clothes, and technology have changed, high school is still high school. You still have the popular kids, the jocks, bullying; it all just looks a little different, but it’s still there.

In case you haven’t visited Urban Dictionary lately, DUFF stands for ‘Designated Ugly Fat Friend’. However, the moniker doesn’t have to strictly adhere to the descriptors the acronym stands for. In broader terms it mainly refers to a situation where a less attractive and more approachable person (usually female, but can apply to either male or female) hangs out or is friends with two or more attractive people. Needless to say that when our main character Bianca is made aware of her situation, drama (of the high school nature) ensues.

I guess one question I initially had was how could a girl with popular friends not be comfortable with who she is? And an even potentially bigger question: does it really matter how you’re perceived? In high school, the answer is almost invariably YES. From the get-go Bianca our protagonist and is portrayed as very independent and very much her own person, but yet she lets the title of ‘The Duff’ to cause doubt in herself. With such a strong minded character, I didn’t get why she let it bother her. Was it just because of high school insecurity? I guess. We need something to move the story along right? Whatever the case may be, I’m always a sucker for high school movies and the struggles of the less popular class of students against the more popular kids at school.

This class struggle is deftly woven into the fabric of the film with the relationship between Bianca and Wesley. At first you might think that they’re the usual “childhood friends” where one grows up to be popular and the other not at all. Well, that’s sort of the case here, but The DUFF gives us some great setup for their friendship by showing us an old photo of Wes and Bianca taking a bath together as kids. You know the type of photo, those embarrassing ones of you that your parents took of you as a kid. It’s inserted into the film and paints us a more authentic history for them.

Being childhood friends, Bianca and Wesley are still pretty good friends in high school–though they both inhabit different social circles. Bianca is the independent, school newspaper editor with something to say who hangs out with two of the hottest girls at school. Wesley meanwhile seems like the stereotypical sex crazed jock–but with some sense of conscience and the right amount of doubt. You can tell he sort of wants to do the right thing (or at least thinks about it), but is held back by the high school social class system that demands the cool kids act like cool kids. Despite their baggage, Bianca and Wes’s friendship feels really developed and their chemistry is fun and playful.

A happy surprise is Ken Jeong who fits in surprisingly well in this film as the supportive teacher. He’s not playing the over the top character that we normally get (à la Mr Chow in the Hangover films) and is definitely dialed it back, but still serving up some pretty witty banter. Amazingly he is the inspirational teacher who thinks he’s cool, but in reality is not. Even though his character tries really hard to be cool, he doesn’t really succeed. It’s his attempt to be cool that really made me want to see more of him. When he delivers his lines you almost feel like you’re seeing a different side to Ken Jeong.

And that kind of leads into one of the great things about this movie: the dialogue. Some of the banter and one-liners are so sharp and so perfectly timed. I’d like to think people are this smart and quick in real life, but I don’t think that’s the case. However, almost every character in the film that has screen time has a quip that they get in or a hilarious comedic beat that they hit. Kudos to the screenwriters for giving us some very smart and very fun dialogue.

Focusing back on Bianca and her quest to un-DUFF herself, we do get the usual plot points that we’re all used to in these types of high school movies: friends stop being friends, our awkward protagonist going after the high school crush, our protagonist getting a makeover, and the always fun romantic comedy drama where one person realizes they have feelings for the other person–but at the wrong time. Though The DUFF has all of these tropes, it’s the way it tells them that kept me interested and laughing throughout the film.

Overall The Duff kind of surprised me. Going in I thought I was going to get some pretty standard high school faire just updated for 2015. Though the story was nothing we haven’t seen before, there was enough of a slant to the characters and situations to make them different enough to feel a little more real and original. And the comedy–definitely one of the highlights. As the The DUFF went on I found myself enjoying the film more and more. Good high school flicks get me every time.

Jupiter Ascending is the latest sci-fi, CGI-filled behemoth from the Wachowskis and sadly, it is their most uninspired effort yet.

One way or another, you still gotta give it up to the sibling writers/directors. From Bound to Cloud Atlas, they’ve dedicated themselves to trying to show us something neato on the screen. Even their unfairly reviled entries, The Matrix Revolutions and Speed Racer, are overly-knocked on bits of screen sumptuousness; in this video game era, they still manage to give us pretty things. If anything, they range from a bit derivative to very derivative, but then again, at this point with big budget studio popcorners, who isn’t? Yet, as fascinating as Jupiter is to occasionally look at, it is obvious that we have seen everything before and for once, the Wachowskis have managed to rip off even themselves.

Mila Kunis is Jupiter, a hard-working janitor who wishes for something greater. She’s also the most beautiful performer to ever be filmed scrubbing a toilet. One day, her cousin comes up with a scheme to sell her eggs and while in the operating room, she discovers aliens are trying to kill her.

“I shall declare this the House of Strep Throat.”

Luckily, Channing Tatum, a human/werewolf soldier of fortune hybrid, comes roller-blading in on anti-gravity boots and spirits her away to his ex-collegue Stinger’s safehouse. (Stinger is played by Sean Bean, who instantly makes us worry for his character’s life.) Soon Jupiter discovers that she is the genetic reincarnation of universal royalty and that there is a whole new world (or worlds) other than our own. Faster than you can say “Neo-Morpheus,” she finds herself in space, trapped between three competing siblings who all what to use her to continue their reins of power, along with their mysterious immortality. (The secret of their longevity is also the second major plot point the Wachowskis rip off from themselves.)

At this point, we are just left with watching the pretty, shape-shifting spaceships firing at each other as well as Tatum flying around shooting and stabbing various beings ranging from simple humans, giant bipedal komodo dragons straight out of Halo, and little green men who look like vicious extras from Close Encounters. (Incidentally, for a movie that looks so pretty, Tatum’s waist seems a bit puffy. Perhaps he was in some sort of “bulking” phase for Magic Mike XXL.)

Gleaming the cube!

Best Actor Oscar nominee Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) plays one of the villainous monarchs and he speaks with a whisper and occasional scream that is more goofy than threatening. And there’s also these anti-gravity boots that move like roller-blades which— Oops. That’s been mentioned already.

Actually there really isn’t anything else worth mentioning about Jupiter Ascending. No wonder it was released in February. For their next project, the Wachowskis should work with a script of adapted material. They seem to do better ripping other people off and that would just cut out the middle man.

Okay fine, I’m not the hugest fan of the series but seriously, while watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, I was bored. Like, bored out of my skull. And I was in a preview screening so security guards were watching and I couldn’t pull out my phone lest they think I was trying to pirate the film.

Already these movies (and books) weren’t exactly cheerful affairs but with the lack of a Battle Royale in this installment, things are really, really dour. After seeing her do “Live and Let Die” in American Hustle, slinking around as Mystique and calling off her own interview with David Letterman, poor Jennifer Lawrence seems to have outgrown her role as Katniss Everdeen. She’s definitely no Kristen Stewart—J-Law looks like she’s absolutely busting at the seems to do something, anything. Alas, most of her time is spent looking morose and dejected, something K-Stew had no trouble doing.

Granted, the adapted screenplay doesn’t give her much opportunity since it basically cut the final source material in half. Even more so than The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 though, Mockingjay suffers from being a project comprised of only a first and second act. And unlike Peter Jackson, nothing entertaining is made up just to fill in space.

This is Sutherland’s only scene in the movie.

Katniss wakes up on a rebel airship and spends the rest of the time trying to decide whether she wants to become a propaganda instrument against the evil Capitol and it’s equally evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland). She also worries a lot about her buddy Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who got left behind in the previous film and is now in the hands of Snow, and losing weight very quickly. Hopefully his skinniness was CGI cause poor Hutcherson looks positively anorexic.

A few performers do what they can with what little they have. Elizabeth Banks still manages to be a diva as Effie, the fashionable emcee of The Hunger Games, even though she is now a political refugee in a jump suit. Donald Sutherland appears to be having a good time overacting with his Satanic line readings, but he’s hardly in the movie so he barely registers.

They wish their agents got them more money.

But esteemed actors like Julianne Moore, as the powerful leader of the resistance, is just going through the firm-jawed motions. The saddest though, is Philip Seymour Hoffman. As a member of the leadership committee, he just meekly agrees or disagrees with Moore. Tragic how this is the last role he will ever play.

But then it all must come down to tragedy with this bleak, dystopian series. Even the cinematography has a gray grain so thick that it almost blurs the scenery. Fans, of course, will not care. And considering that the fan base are pre-programmed admirers of the novels, they should be satisfied with this additional entry of loose-ended angst. Other audience members dragged into the theaters against their will might want to make sure their phones are fully charged prior. There’s a new version of Candy Crush to help pass the time.

The Hunger Games – Mockingjay Part 1 is now playing in theaters everywhere.

Daniel Radcliffe bets he had some of that Harry Potter love potion right about now.

How many guys (or girls) have faced the dilemma posed as the central conceit of What If: Can a guy and a girl just be friends without feelings/relationship/desire/sex getting in the way? It’s an interesting question and I’m sure at the very least someone you know has probably experienced the uncomfortable situation of being friends with a member of the opposite sex in the hopes that they can make the jump from friend to ‘something more’.

What If gives us Daniel Radcliffe, the grown up Harry Potter himself playing Wallace, a med-school dropout and relationship recovering 20-something living in Toronto. Still trying to get over his last relationship from a year ago, he happens to meet Chantry played by Zoe Kazan–a down to earth manic pixie dream girl who he has an instant connection with and who brightens up an otherwise dull party. After enjoying a wonderful evening of conversation and even walking Chantry home, she drops the bomb on him . . . she has a boyfriend but still wants to be friends with him. Awesome right? Dumbstruck and not really sure of what to make of the situation, Wallace talks himself into the friendship as having some sort of relationship with her is still better than nothing.

But that’s what a good friend likes to do . . . watch you while you sleep.

What I like about the movie is that it feels pretty authentic how Wallace tries to navigate his friendship with Chantry. The role of being the good friend, the behind the scenes silent anguish, the rationalizing of it all; a lot of what Wallace goes through is exactly what happens when you’re in that type of situation. He wants to get his feelings out, but because of the complexity of the situation, he fears that once he does, he could lose everything.

The chemistry between Kazan and Radcliffe have between their characters quite good. Kazan plays Chantry as sort of a free spirit type, but a bit more reliable and reasonable as she’s always trying to make everything work (her job, relationship, friendship). Radcliffe on the opposite side is loveable and affable in his portrayal of Wallace. Their characters are obviously awkward at first, but as the film goes on and their friendship (and feelings) start to grow, you do see them as this cohesive unit and begin to wonder, “Why don’t they just get together?” If there’s one knock against them, it’s that their characters definitely feel like characters from an indie rom-com as they have a lot of weird and random banter between each other; more than I felt would happen in real life.

You’re friend-zoning me? Seriously?

Since it’s a rom-com, we’re obviously heading towards some sort of conflict where feelings come out, people are hurt and/or are mad, and we end up with a rift between the guy and the girl. While I won’t give anything away, I did feel the way both characters handled the confrontation was fairly reasonable (up to a point) and felt pretty authentic, unlike studio rom-coms where the girl has unbelievably high expectations or where a misunderstanding is blown WAY out of proportion. In these movies I also feel that someone has to be a dick since if there’s a love triangle, the third wheel is usually sacrificed so that the main characters can get together. What If handles both of these hurdles pretty well and I left the theater feeling pretty upbeat about where Chantry and Wallace ended up and how they got there.

With summer winding down and movie-date night options being really scarce, What If fills that void by being a rom-com that’s fairly realistic and isn’t melodramatic. I’m sure guys won’t be clamoring to see it, but they can take comfort in the fact that What If rises above the rest in the genre. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s cute; and you could do far worse seeing something else this weekend.

What If expands this weekend and can be seen at Consolidated Kahala 8, Consolidated Ko’olau Stadium 10, and Regal Dole Cannery 18.